December Daily 2015: Day 1

| cristina

Hello! Today I am sharing my December Daily spread for December 1st.

Everything I used is from the December Daily kit, except from the foam glitters star from my stash, and the plastic embellishment and gold phrase sticker from Pinkfresh Studio.

In all my past albums I’ve only included things from that day, but this year I was inspired by Ali to include what else we’ve been doing before December that is Christmas related. So the left page of this spread is dedicated to what we did before December.
I’m so proud of myself – I took an online lettering class by Amanda Arneill (I love her!!) – and this is my first time putting it to use. I scripted the “Before” with a brush pen directly on the paper and I love how it turned out!

The right page of the spread is for my December 1st story. The first pocket has three 1-inch circles with stamps embossed with gold glitter and red glitter. The photo is of my tree, and I used foam dots to pop up the “twinkle” sticker. I embellished the bottom left card with stamping, and wrote down my story for the day. I love the fourth pocket – I stamped the date directly on the wooden tree from the kit.
Today’s story: My husband bought an awesome little tool, fixed our Christmas tree lights and saved the day. Highly recommended! 🙂

My album is coming along nicely – I am working on my Dec. 7th spread; alas, I will be traveling for the next couple of days so I may fall a bit behind. It’s all good. And I have some posts scheduled for the next few days to share a few more days’ worth.

December Daily 2015: Title Page

| cristina

This is my sixth year putting together a December Daily album, and for the first time I’ve bought a December Daily kit from Ali Edwards. I also got a mini kit. Not that I needed any Christmas product, since my stash was quite full already, but I just couldn’t resist. 🙂 I am using a 6″x8″ ring album.

I started working on the album this past week, and today I want to share with you my title page – I love how it turned out!

I ended up layering 2 pages for my “title page”, since I loved them both so much and didn’t want to pick. 🙂

The first layer is a page protector with 2″ square slots, that I filled with bits and pieces.

I filled the pockets so that there’s something pretty to see on either side of the page. The stitching is a bit messy – I do not own a Fuse tool, but I think it would have made wonders for this page.

The second layer of my title page builds on one of the awesome transparency sheets in the December Daily kit – I love how thick it is! I added some acetate letters that I had saved from my October Wink Wink Studio Calico kit for this reason, some puffy alpha stickers from Studio Calico, and the rubber “December” was cut from one of the banners included in the December Daily kit.

As a backdrop for this page, I have a page protector with two 4″x6″ slots with one of the papers from the kit that I absolutely love.

And here are all the layers stacked together. It makes me so happy to see this when I open my album!

My days 1-4 are done and photographed, so they will be posted on this blog very soon. Have a merry December!

Hello December

| cristina

December is here, and I have some super exciting news to share – I am the guest Designer at Citrus Twist Kits this month! They sent me the scrapbooking kit (“Wonder”) and I was amazed at how packed it is!

The kit comes with 6 patterned papers (Crate Paper, Basic Gray, Seven Paper), 2 pieces of cardstock (white and cream), a 12×12 sheet of stickers (Maggie Holmes Shine, Crate Paper), a set of puffy gold stickers (love!! Pink Paislee), wood veneer plus signs, an exclusive stamp set, a set of 3″x3″ die cuts (Seven Paper), gold doilies, an acrylic heart shape, embroidering thread, a sheet of phrases and labels, and the most gorgeous turquoise puffy alpha (Amy Tangerine).
I haven’t had as much time to play with the kit as I would have liked (mostly for a good reason – my mom came to visit for ten days, and left yesterday – but also having to deal with a work emergency that is never-ending – ugh!). So far I have made 3 layouts and a mini album, but I have lots of items left to make more, so I am not done with this kit yet! 🙂
The first page I made is a Christmas page – even though this kit doesn’t have a holiday theme, it works great for holiday pages. As soon as I saw that tree paper by Basic Grey I have wanted to use it for a Christmas page, so that’s what I did.
I had so much fun embellishing the tree with wood veneer and stickers! This page is up on the Citrus Twist blog if you want to check it out, read a bit about me, and take a peek at my craft space.
My next project is based on a sketch that will be up on the Citrus Twist blog later this month. I will be posting the page here once that goes live; in the meantime here’s a detail shot:
I thought the geometric patterns of the paper matched my shirt really well! 🙂
Another page will also be up on the blog later this month with a step-by-step tutorial – here’s a close up shot for now.
So look for these pages to be posted here in the next few weeks, along with the mini album I made.

Black Friday

| cristina

Hello and happy Black Friday! (4 weeks to Christmas… eeeek!!) The sale at The Lilypad is epic!

And the new Memory Pockets Monthly collection (Magic) is in the store. I’m in love!!

Here’s what I made.

Credits:
School of Hard Knocks templates by Jimbo Jambo Designs

Credits:

Believe papers and Drama Queen Magic by Valorie Wibbens

Have a great weekend!

M3: November

| cristina

Hi there! I have been pretty quiet here and on Instagram lately..  Just a little overwhelmed with things. A dear friend has suddenly fallen ill in the last month (cancer), and is on his last days. So very sad.. I cannot come to terms with how quick it all happened. In light of this all, I have been reflecting on my life, and I have lots to be thankful for. Especially this time of year it is good to stop and think about all the blessings in my life. {taking a deep breath}

I have still been creating these days (and something extra special coming this way Dec. 1st.. 😉 hint hint!), this is truly one of the blessings in my life, to be able to create and express myself through scrapbooking. Today I have some pages to share made with the November Mixed Media Monthly kit from The Lilypad. It’s hard to put in words how much I love this monthly collection… it is SO good!

The first page I made is about fall:

Credits:

A lot of the papers/elements/brushes in the kit really speak Christmas to me. I will be putting them to good use in my December Daily album – in particular the designs from the latest addition to the store at The Lilypad: Nancie Rowe Janitz.


Credits:

And TGIF (almost)!! Have a great weekend!

Kill My Studio Calico Kit: October – Wink Wink

| cristina

Hello and welcome back for another month of Kill My Studio Calico Kit! I have to admit last month I was a bit out of steam, but this month’s kit really inspired me to just have fun and create.
Like last month, I only got the Studio Calico scrapbook main kit, Wink Wink ($34.99). There was only one thing I loved in the embellishment add on kit so I passed.

Notes: I certainly do better with bold colors, and this kit has plenty! I love the plastic letters, the puffy asterisks, and the chipboard circles.

Kill my Studio Calico kit is a monthly series I started on my blog to hold myself accountable and use up my kits. My goal is to use up a kit before the next one arrives.

You can subscribe to the Studio Calico Scrapbook kit here.

Status: killed!
I made 11 layouts (10 12″x12″, 1 8.5″x11″), for a total of $34.99, or $3.19/page. I supplemented the kit with some cardstock from my stash, stamps, and the odd embellishment. Here’s a roundup of all the pages I made:

And here is what I have left:

Leftovers: I very nearly didn’t kill this kit.  I ran out of time. I was gone for a couple of weeks in the past month on travel so I made the best I could do, and was almost ready to move on to the next kit, but then inspiration hit and I made 3 more pages and officially killed the kit. The pink card stock just didn’t work for me with this kit, so in my stash it goes. I hoarded some of those puffy stickers 🙂 because I didn’t want to use them all up at once.

And here is what I made with the kit.

The die cut paper (the specialty paper for this month) is so much fun! I love that blue paper, and I arranged the strips of paper to be a bit wonky to add some fun to this page. This is my favorite page this month!

I arranged my circles/shapes in rainbow order and watercolored the patterned paper to match. I added the journaling at the bottom of the page after the picture was taken (it’s a bit personal), as well as a title with the black alpha letters on top of the patterned paper – they are a great addition to ground all the pops of color on this page.

I love that blue color!

I watercolored the tag but you can no longer see the embossed camera (or barely) so I wouldn’t recommend it unless that’s the effect you’re going after.

I love the fun colors of the acetate alpha in the kit!

I recently bought a tag die and I am having fun making tags from patterned paper!

On this page I used a few leftover embellishments from past scrapbook kits (Galileo – puffy sticker, heart die cut; Fairground – word strips; Brimfield – washi strip, chipboard phrases).

That diamond paper is one of my favorites this month. I prefer the black on white side, but I thought the white on black side worked best on this page.

The label and puffy stickers are from my stash. I also used the stamp from the November kit (love it!).

This is a 2-pager. I couldn’t bear cutting up or covering that lettered paper, so a 2-pager it is. 🙂

And that wraps up this month! Are you enjoying this blog series? Do leave me a comment if you are.

You can subscribe to the Studio Calico Scrapbook kit here.

Catching Up

| cristina

Phew. I have been traveling for the past 3 weeks, but now I am put until December. I have quite a bit of crafting to catch up on! So first things first, here’s a page I made with today’s new release from creashens:

 

Credits:

And TGIF!! 🙂 Have a great weekend! (PS… it’d DSD tomorrow – Digital Scrapbooking Day – and the celebrations are already in full swing at The Lilypad!).